


a change of plans may be in order

by spoke



Category: Watership Down - Richard Adams
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke





	a change of plans may be in order

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



By the time he came across the strange rabbits, Blackavar was moving as quietly as he’d ever done back in Efafra. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d escaped, after all, and they might have been Efafrans. He’d never heard of a wide patrol coming as far as this, but they might do if Woundwort decided he needed to be made an example of.

He didn’t like to think of the example he’d make to any decent rabbit, having left the does behind. But his nerve had just... failed. In a way he hadn’t thought he was capable of, which made him wonder if maybe the other Efafrans had been right to pass him over for promotion. Maybe they’d seen it in him when he hadn’t. Except, of course, that he knew very well he was better than he’d ever been given due credit for.

Which melancholy thoughts were crawling through his head when he first saw the others. After the initial shock and fear, however, it became rapidly apparent that they were not from his former warren, because they hadn’t the sense of kits as far Blackavar could tell. They were taking something like precautions against elil, right enough, but not nearly thorough enough. Any Wide Patrol would have them wrapped up soon enough, and one of them would if they kept on the way they were going. 

What to do, what to do...

* * *

Well, nobody had expected to run into another rabbit so soon, given what Kehaar had told them about how hidden these other rabbits seemed to keep themselves. But what Kehaar hadn’t seen turned out to be an entirely different story, and a deeply disturbing one to boot. There was a fair bit of discussion, but in the end Blackavar’s eerily calm certainty of how horrible it would be convinced them they needed to go back.

Blackavar rather insisted on coming along, partly to give his advice to Hazel-rah directly, and partly because he had no warren now. Possibly the most disturbing part of the entire conversation had been when they’d suggested his coming on (or back) to Efafra with them - they’d never seen such a complete change of temperment so quickly as Blackavar’s insisting he’d sooner die that return to that warren.


End file.
